At least 12 people were killed yesterday as US troops battled insurgents who fired a salvo of mortars into Iraq's government compound, orchestrated two failed car bombings and assassinated a security official.
Militants loyal to alleged al-Qaeda operative and Iraq's most wanted man, Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, claimed attacks on the heavily-fortified Green Zone housing the government and the US embassy and on the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
The battles raged hours after US-led troops across the country commemorated the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks on the US, blamed on al-Qaeda, which led to the US-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
At least 12 people were killed, including two children, and 41 wounded during intense fighting around Haifa Street, considered a bastion of Saddam Hussein loyalists, according to doctors at two local hospitals.
Mazen al-Tomaisi, a Palestinian working for Saudi and al-Arabiya television, died and two photographers were wounded in a US helicopter attack during the clashes, media sources said.
The fighting erupted after a suspected car bomb exploded two hours before dawn in Haifa Street where insurgents and US troops clash regularly.
Heavy machine-gun and assault rifle fire reverberated across the street for three hours and a tank was mobilized to support US troops.
As the sun rose at 6:30am, a car bomb struck the tank, wounding four people, a military spokeswoman said.
A pair of US helicopters then swooped down over the neighborhood and fired missiles into the mob, scattering at least five corpses across the ground.
The US military said the tank was destroyed from the air "to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people."
Simultaneously, two drivers were shot dead while trying to ram cars rigged with explosives into the high-security Green Zone and the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, Iraqi and US sources said.
Another man was killed trying to smash his car through the compound of the Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, the US military said.
An Iraqi police colonel also died in a car bombing on his way to work, a ministry spokesman said.
Gunmen attacked security forces guarding the Dibis and Kirkuk oilfields in two separate attacks yesterday, injuring five officers, a security official said.
He said the assailants fled the scene in the two attacks. No other details were available.
‘TAIWAN-FRIENDLY’: The last time the Web site fact sheet removed the lines on the US not supporting Taiwanese independence was during the Biden administration in 2022 The US Department of State has removed a statement on its Web site that it does not support Taiwanese independence, among changes that the Taiwanese government praised yesterday as supporting Taiwan. The Taiwan-US relations fact sheet, produced by the department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, previously stated that the US opposes “any unilateral changes to the status quo from either side; we do not support Taiwan independence; and we expect cross-strait differences to be resolved by peaceful means.” In the updated version published on Thursday, the line stating that the US does not support Taiwanese independence had been removed. The updated
‘CORRECT IDENTIFICATION’: Beginning in May, Taiwanese married to Japanese can register their home country as Taiwan in their spouse’s family record, ‘Nikkei Asia’ said The government yesterday thanked Japan for revising rules that would allow Taiwanese nationals married to Japanese citizens to list their home country as “Taiwan” in the official family record database. At present, Taiwanese have to select “China.” Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said the new rule, set to be implemented in May, would now “correctly” identify Taiwanese in Japan and help protect their rights, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. The statement was released after Nikkei Asia reported the new policy earlier yesterday. The name and nationality of a non-Japanese person marrying a Japanese national is added to the
AT RISK: The council reiterated that people should seriously consider the necessity of visiting China, after Beijing passed 22 guidelines to punish ‘die-hard’ separatists The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has since Jan. 1 last year received 65 petitions regarding Taiwanese who were interrogated or detained in China, MAC Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) said yesterday. Fifty-two either went missing or had their personal freedoms restricted, with some put in criminal detention, while 13 were interrogated and temporarily detained, he said in a radio interview. On June 21 last year, China announced 22 guidelines to punish “die-hard Taiwanese independence separatists,” allowing Chinese courts to try people in absentia. The guidelines are uncivilized and inhumane, allowing Beijing to seize assets and issue the death penalty, with no regard for potential
‘UNITED FRONT’ FRONTS: Barring contact with Huaqiao and Jinan universities is needed to stop China targeting Taiwanese students, the education minister said Taiwan has blacklisted two Chinese universities from conducting academic exchange programs in the nation after reports that the institutes are arms of Beijing’s United Front Work Department, Minister of Education Cheng Ying-yao (鄭英耀) said in an exclusive interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper) published yesterday. China’s Huaqiao University in Xiamen and Quanzhou, as well as Jinan University in Guangzhou, which have 600 and 1,500 Taiwanese on their rolls respectively, are under direct control of the Chinese government’s political warfare branch, Cheng said, citing reports by national security officials. A comprehensive ban on Taiwanese institutions collaborating or
RSS